An ISI okay for luxury labels: What'll we think of next?

Reports this week in Mint on the government's new quality-control orders on high-end luxury shoes from Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior included the gem that the shoes certified appropriate for pampered Indian women's feet would be mandated to have an ISI stamp (a sign of Indian Standards Institute approval) to embellish them. This sounded like a comic skit of the new licence raj, written not by Kafka but by those who made Carrie Bradshaw and her love of swanky Jimmy Choo shoes a key theme of the TV series Sex and The City. Such certification is impractical. As happens so…